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Your Comments on Admissions Essays

By Jacques Steinberg October 12, 2010 1:00 pmOctober 12, 2010 1:00 pm

One of the pleasures of editing The Choice occurs when readers lob in level-headed comments borne of experience. Many of the responses to Dave Marcus’s post on Monday about essay-writing would have surely helped me as a high school senior applying to college (yes, a long time ago, in the mid-1980s) and may yet help my own children, whose college application deadlines are, mercifully, still years away.

I think it’s important for readers to get into the heads of the applicants, feel the rhythm of these young lives. If you can help the reader to relate and understand the thoughts, feelings, and movements of the writer, then you have them hooked.

Write about something they cannot learn from your résumé or your activities list — a small moment that tells the reviewer something about you that would otherwise not be revealed.

This commenter, someone who has helped students with their essays, suggests that whatever subject the writer chooses, it ultimately be a means to an end:

Your application essay is a story about you. It’s not about poor orphans in Ecuador or your Great-Aunt Lucy or the time you ran for student government. It’s about how that person or experience affected you. Are you different now? Did you learn something meaningful about yourself?

While Mr. Marcus learned much about college essay-writing as a journalist shadowing a guidance counselor, my own perspective was heavily informed by the year I spent as a journalist sitting at the elbow of an admissions officer and his colleagues. Some of you, in your comments, expressed a hunger to read model essays — essays perceived to have gained a student entry to the college of his or her choice.

While I can understand this desire, I want to caution you that, like so much of the admissions process, how an essay is received can be heavily dependent on the point of view, life experience and priorities of the reader. So to the extent you look at so-called model essays, don’t be lulled into thinking there is any formula at work here. As one commenter wrote, there is “no magic potion.”

That said, I appreciate the comment, posted this morning, from the teacher who recommends that students read a handful of sample admissions essays that have been published over the years and then “identify three things or traits that were revealed about the writer/applicant.”

Two closing thoughts on this subject:

Several of you wondered whether admissions officers can tell if an essay has been largely written by an adult (presumably a parent or independent consultant), or, at the least, extensively revised in a pass through a grown-up’s computer. I would suggest, having read dozens of essays alongside some admissions officers and interviewed many others, that they can often distinguish the voice of a young person from that of someone who, say, has put a few more miles on the odometer.

Some admissions have read upwards of 1,000 essays a year over the course of several decades; they’re critical readers, and, as a gut-check, they might try to compare the writing sample in front of them to everything else they know about the applicant, such as his or her grades in English or what the student’s teachers say.

Is it possible to put one over on them? Of course, but is that any way to start a college education?

Lastly, one of the best pieces of advice I heard on approaching the college essay was at a College Board conference in New York last year. At a panel discussion there, I heard Chad Hemmelgarn, an English teacher at Bexley High School in Columbus, Ohio, offer the following analogy for a college admissions essay.

“It’s kind of like a first date,” he said. “You’re telling us the stuff that makes you special.”

I have not used college writing. And I’m a writer. I have not used most of my liberal arts education. Especially math. Our education system is not practical. I should have learned how to write in HTML, not formal English.

This is an admittedly limited anecdotal piece of information, but I definitely feel that an admissions officer would be able to distinguish the voice of youth from the voice of maturity — basically, parents and teachers are way more measured. As I read my daughter’s essays, there were things that made me cringe a little — not bad things, just things that seemed to be a little too unguarded, conveying the excesses of youthful enthusiasm that would be totally absent from anything I would ever consider appropriate for submission. Naturally, she told me to buzz off when I gently asked whether some of these things might be said a little less stridently.

I had the hardest time writing my college essays last year. I tried writing about mundane and grandiose topics alike, and all came out trite, melancholy or point-less. In the end, I just asked, “If I could only tell someone one thing about myself, what would it be?”

It ended up working – the essay was about as genuine me as possible. (I wrote about how I wasn’t a tree hugger… long story lol…) Now I give that question as advice when seniors from my old school ask for help with their essays. Hopefully it can help some other people too….

As both an independent college admission consultant and a parent of a college junior and a high school senior, I have spent a lot of time advising students on the application essay. There are two pieces of advice I believe rise above all others:

1. If you were to slip your unsigned essay under the door of your favorite teacher, would they know it was yours?

2. Don’t be too cautious, write unconventionally, and take risks.

[Blogger’s Note: Mr. Levy’s first point is well-taken. But I do want to sound a note of caution on the notion of taking risks in a college admissions essay. You really have to know yourself, and your threshold for risk. Some applicants, for example, set out to try to get a laugh in the essays they write. As a writer, I can tell you that it is no easy thing to be funny in print — even if everyone in your life tells you you’re hilarious. While your essay might read like 10 minutes of stand-up worthy of Dane Cook — the joke may be lost on the admissions officer reading your composition. Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t send it, or that it won’t hit the bull’s eye with someone else in the office. (Typically, at least two people in the admissions office of highly selective colleges will read an essay, and sometimes the entire committee.)

Same goes for Mr. Levy’s advice to be “unconventional.” If you’re inclined to be bold in your essay, spend some time, in advance, contemplating how comfortable you are with such strategies. Sometimes extracting telling, evocative details from your everyday life, however mundane they may seem to you, may be all that is needed to forge a connection with an admissions officer trying only to get to know you a little through your writing. –Jacques Steinberg]

Helping a bilingual student with his college application essays a few years back, I found that his biggest hurdle was to let go of the idea that he had to use a ponderous, pseudo-scholarly style of writing in order to impress an admissions board. It just wasn’t working for him. Some students see it as a risk to use straightforward, everyday English.

Also, when advised not to be “too cautious” and “to write unconventionally,” many students may feel unsure they know what these mean. I certainly wouldn’t be able to explain, even if I could critique a completed essay as too cautious or too conventional, but “too conventional” would probably refer to the content (death of grandparent, service in Costa Rica, etc) rather than the style of writing, which the use of the verb and adverb suggest.

“Taking risks” and “being bold” is the prerogative of the moneyed class. It is both an attitude difference and a position of comfort and not one afforded to the middle and lower classes.

The moneyed class is used to ‘being bold’–they assume that others will fall in line with their ideas, applaud them, or, if not, someone else will. They have gone to private or exclusive public schools all their lives where no money is spared in nurturing their ‘boldness’ — whereas the rest of us middle and lower class shlubs are coerced to drudgery and conformity and anything BUT boldness in our endless standardized tests.

The wealthy also operate under the assumption that the admissions office speaks the same language as they–comes from the same class/race background. They can assume that if they make a joke, the admissions office will understand it. They can assume that allusions, references and experiences will be shared or at least understood or viewed sympathetically. Just to give a small example, an impoverished student of mine wrote a passionate essay about the time she was out with her boyfriend at the mall and another girl ‘looked’ at him, so she “lost it” and beat the other girl up. She was kicked out of the mall and went over to the giant garbage tin out back, where her boyfriend joined her and told her how much he loved her.

In her class, there are assumptions here of honor and possession and an acceptance of violence that are certainly not shared by the dominant culture. And even if a wealthy student were to have this exact experience, he would understand that no admissions office would respect an essay like this–because he is of the same culture.

This is just one example of how class plays hugely in essays.

I remember reading Chicago’s idea of a successful essay last year, and the chief thing that struck me – besides the fact that it was utterly devoid of content – was that the writer was obviously wealthy. He (definitely a ‘he’) could assume that people would be tickled pink to read several pages of drivel about how in love he was with Chicago. And he was right.

But if he was wrong, no biggie. That’s because the moneyed class need not worry about scholarships or funding, and also they have a leg up in admissions in most cash-strapped colleges; checking off that you will be applying for financial aid lowers your chances of getting into a college. The moneyed class can shrug it off and assume some other college will accept them.

Whereas most students cannot afford to be ‘bold’ and ‘risky.’ It is simply TOO risky; they may lose everything. And of course they did not grow up listened to and being told how wonderful their ideas were, they did not grow up assuming that everyone understood their language and culture.

I am constantly struck by the class assumptions in most postings here on college applications. I really wish the Times would pay more attention to the huge role class plays in college admissions. mostly subconsciously of course. It’s not just the moneyed class that needs advice on college essay applications.

My advice to essay writers is to remember that very few essays actually make the difference in the decision between acceptance and rejection.

Therefore, I advise essay writers to go for neutral, rather than amazing or potentially dangerous (eg. the spitting waitress). if the rest of the application is a good fit with the college. Pick an accomplishment or an experience that you are particularly proud of and describe it with lots of detail. Your enthusiasm will naturally shine through and that expresses your personal values and unique perspective.

While we could certainly discuss the ways that post-secondary education shapes the next generation’s elite, it is erroneous to conclude that “taking risks and being bold is the prerogative of the moneyed class.” Taking risks and being bold is the prerogative of the imaginative, self-confident, and far- thinking—it is not determined by ones class. As educators and parents, we strive to encourage our young people to be just that, to reach their fullest potential, regardless of their social position.

And the implication that admission officers are also members of this “moneyed class” is nonsense. They are underpaid and overworked, and do what they do in most cases because they are passionate about the transformative possibilities of higher education.

This is a response to Mr. Steinberg’s comment to my post #6 about “taking risks.” He has certainly spoken with far more admission officers than I have, but my advice to students to “take risks” and “not be too cautious” comes almost verbatim from a seasoned admission officer who has reached this conclusion after many years of reading application essays. What he concludes is that often these essays are too safe, too concerned with saying the right thing, with not offending, with fitting some notion of what colleges want to hear. His wish to see applicants break with these restraints was not a call to be reckless with the essay or step out of one’s comfort zone, but simply to help students understand that they have more freedom than they think. I believe this is sound advice.

After 8 years of reading essays for Amherst College (2 per application x about 1200 applications a year; you can figure out the result), I can say that the applicants who wrote expansively and honestly were the ones that got me thinking. I looked for applicants who knew they might not be the first ones to have had this particular idea, or who could write about a person or a character without resorting to cliched, tired imagery.
There’s content and then there’s style. Sometimes even applicants with great stories couldn’t make them come alive, and sometimes those who could see the expansiveness of the everyday made me want to see them on campus.
I’d rather see an honest essay with some flaws than a “perfect” piece.
I managed to get this topic into the Amherst application for two years: “Sartre said ‘Hell is other people,’ but Streisand sang “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” Discuss. Unfortunately, most writers took the “Sometimes one, sometimes the other” route which of course bored the heck out of me. But one kid managed to get into it. His opening sentence was “Hell is people who need people.”
Parents manage to mess up their kids’ essays more often than not. One of my students when I was a college counselor wrote about his grandfather, who was a Jewish refugee in Shanghai during WW II, where there was a thriving Jewish community (who knew???). He sold mattresses to make a living and was now living with the family in Chicago. It was a perfectly wonderful and interesting profile but his parents made him do something else because it wasn’t about him. But of course it was.

Most college application essays are terrible, frankly, for a whole mess of reasons. I hope it’s not too self-serving to suggest readers take a look at The Crabby Counselor’s essay advice at funnyhamlet.wordpress.com.

I noticed in another column that admissions were impressed with an essay by young man who had to get his sibs onto the bus in the morning and get dinner ready at night because ‘both parents worked.”

Not to beat a dead horse, but the very fact that this was lauded as a memorable essay is yet another perfect example of the subconscious nature of class assumptions. I am a single mother who works full time. I leave for work at 6:00 am, well before any of my children go to school. My older children – without even thinking about it – make their younger sibs hot breakfast, get themselves to school and, in the evening, do all sorts of chores: laundry, dishes, vacuuming, mowing the lawn, take out the garbage, etc. This is all without my asking. It is simply assumed that, as young adults, they must pull their own weight in our household. My 11 year old does his own laundry without my asking.

Yet it has never occurred to any of my college aged children to write about this. Why? Because it’s a given. Why would they write about it? It would be like writing about brushing their teeth or how they have to take the dog for a walk.

Only someone who is AWARE that it’s a mark of unusual maturity compared to the upper classes to have actual home responsibilities, would write an essay about it. And that means someone either from the moneyed class, or very close to the moneyed class. No one in the middle or lower middle class would even THINK of writing an essay about such an unremarkable thing as taking cares of sibs or doing housework. The fact that admissions finds this sort of essay memorable–what does that say about the students who usually apply?

DC– You are very right in your comments about the class- based assumptions of “elite” colleges. We oohed and aahed about kids that you describe exactly because they were so unusual. In fact many times their stories about unselfconscious self-reliance were a great relief from the dreary stories of digging latrines in Guatemala submitted by suburbanites.

At the same time, we understood, I think, that there is indeed a class divide and we were hoping to usher these kids into the middle and upper-middle class since we know that a college degree is a significant factor in later-life income.

I’d suggest that the unusual quality of these stories is becoming less prominent as colleges seek to admit more low-SES students. It may feel like noblesse oblige now, but I truly believe that by giving some of these students access to the resources a college like Amherst has to offer, we are doing something to bridge the class divide, not simply point it out.

I think the points about classism are good ones. That said, the point of the original blog post was that you don’t have to write an essay about something as special as a life-changing trip or the ways in which you show “unusual maturity”. Maybe another way to say that is that trying explicitly to sound impressive or unusual, either in your choice of topic or use of language, isn’t the most effective way to go.

I bet any ordinary thing which meant enough to you that 1) you had an original thought about it, and 2) you want to make an effort to explain how you felt about it clearly to someone else, should work fine. I wrote (some time ago now) about building sand castles, blowing soap bubbles with friends, and what’s so good about Murphy’s law. None of them were about the colleges themselves, they weren’t that funny (at least, not intentionally so…), and I didn’t think the topics were “bold” or “risky” either….

I’m a senior currently going through the college admissions process. I attend an elite public high school in NJ, so everyday, the conversations in the hallways revolve around college essays, standardized tests, extra-curricular activities, what have you. It can become pretty excruciating — especially when you’re nervous about the entire process yourself. The pressure that kids suffer in these “overachiever communities” makes it extremely difficult to be creative when it comes to college essays. Most of us come from upper middle-class families — so we don’t have the “rising against all circumstances” essay. So, the question becomes, what do we write about?

I know that I was confused at first when I began to brainstorm essays — I wanted to describe all of my accomplishments in detail. My friends thought along the same lines. And who could blame us? After working so hard, wouldn’t you want to sound a little pretentious? But after a while, I came to the realization (mostly through writing U. Chicago essays — which definitely have the best prompts) that the college admissions officers really want to see your thought process more so than your individual experiences. Perhaps you performed dentistry for disadvantaged children in Haiti. Fantastic — but did that really change you at all? If you can’t think of an answer without sounding cliche, then don’t write it. Everyone changes their minds about life at one point or another — especially when you’re a teenager. Write about the things that actually changed your life, and how.

Perhaps I’m wrong. But I’d rather be true to myself in these essays than live up to some college admissions process norm.

P.S. Get your parents or an English teacher to review your grammar. I don’t care if you scored an 800 on Verbal. There’s always room for improvement.

As an independent admissions consultant, and a former full-time Admissions staffer, I have to say that this post if full (full!) of good advice.

I’d like to add a few comments to the high school senior from NJ, one of the most competitive places from which to apply. I find it interesting that in trying to be true to himself, he hopes to avoid writing the the “college admissions norm.” Right here, I think that he is ahead of the game, but not because he is simply being true to himself, but in a way that communicates effectively.

Over and over, I try to stress with my clients that useful essays are better than perfect ones. This is because every person’s idea of perfect tends to sabotage the communication process. But an essay that describes, straightforwardly, something important about yourself, has a much greater chance of communicating to Admissions.